Shanghai, July 25–28, 2025

The 2025 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) once again demonstrated its position as the premier global forum for AI research, governance, and industrial innovation. The event attracted over 160,000 participants from more than 40 countries, showcasing cutting-edge technology, policymaking, and international collaboration across developed and emerging economies.

This year, IDEAS played a pivotal role—not only as an active participant but also as co-organizer of the “Win-Win BRICS” Forum, amplifying the voices and influence of the Global South in AI discourse and development. A key milestone was the official launch of the international English academic journal AI & Innovation (AI²), jointly published with Tsinghua University, Xiamen University, and Wiley. The journal’s call for paper is now open to AI scholars worldwide.

Embodied AI Panel: Global South Perspectives

On July 27, IDEAS hosted an influential panel on Embodied AI, featuring Shameem Ahmad Nawber (Regional Lead for South Asia & Middle East) and Prof. Mirko Farina (Head of the Human-Robot Interaction Lab) as panelists. They joined a distinguished group of international scholars, industry leaders, and policymakers to examine embodied AI’s practical deployments, challenges, and strategic significance, particularly from Global South perspectives.

Shameem Ahmad Nawber offered an in-depth policy and societal perspective. He argued that embodied AI—spanning robots, autonomous machines, and AI-embedded city systems—has become a key lever for digital sovereignty. For governments, this is no longer just a tech upgrade, but a way to secure control over data, labor standards, industrial capacity, and even national values, rather than relying wholly on imported systems. He spotlighted the leadership of some countries, highlighting, for example, the $1.25 billion USD IndiaAI Mission, which built one of the world’s largest public AI compute clusters (over 34,000 GPUs), while the National Robotics Strategy positions the country as a global hub for indigenous robotics and AI by 2030. He cited innovative startups such as Addverb Technologies, now shipping advanced robots internationally, and Bandicoot, a social robot replacing hazardous manual labor across multiple states. Looking forward, Shameem emphasized that embodied AI is poised to transform education and healthcare in diverse contexts. Robot teachers are already being deployed to provide personalized instruction in multiple languages, helping make quality, values-driven learning accessible in both urban and rural areas. In manufacturing, while robots will take on repetitive or dangerous tasks, government-supported upskilling programs will ensure that workers transition into roles focused on supervising, programming, and ethically governing these technologies, promoting workforce inclusion and a balanced human-machine collaboration.

Prof. Mirko Farina highlighted that while AI has long been confined to the digital world, it is now increasingly embodied—AI systems that learn and act through direct interaction with their physical environment. He distinguished two main trends: collaborative robots that support and enhance human productivity, and autonomous robots that can fully replace humans in hazardous or repetitive tasks, especially in logistics and industry. Farina cautioned that such shifts could displace many jobs traditionally done by people, so society must prepare through education and risk reduction. He also stressed the importance of ensuring these robots are deployed safely and reliably, calling for continued research to address these practical and ethical challenges.

IDEAS researchers also contributed to plenaries on multilingual foundation models customized for BRICS economies, structured discussions that led to the commitment of a permanent “Global South” track in future WAIC editions, and the launch of the academic journal AI & Innovation (AI²), with its call for paper process now open for global contributions.